Category Archive: Video

Make the Most of YouTube for your ski resort as featured in NSAA

Posted by Milena Regos on February 12, 2012

This article was just featured in the 50th anniversary edition of NSAA Journal (National Ski Areas Association). Huge thanks goes to Troy Hawks, the editor for including it in, and to NSAA itself. Below is the article itself and a link to the PDF. 

Three Steps to Improving Online Video Engagement

By Milena Regos, Founder, Out&About Marketing

YouTube, the online video giant with more than 800 million unique users each month, recently released a set of changes in an effort to become even more social and try to mirror much of the actions associated with Facebook. Ski resort marketers can take advantage of these changes to further ensure that their resort’s channel maintains its brand properties and is optimized in searches, to increase engagement with skiers and riders, and measure overall social media efforts.

 

Here are three easy steps to implementing YouTube’s new features.

 

Step 1- Customize Your Channel

Squaw Valley YouTube channel

By customizing their channel, ski areas can extend their brand and take full advantage of all the available YouTube features that not only help channels gain notice among viewers, but improves search capabilities and optimizes its ability to drive traffic to other social networks, blogs, and websites.

The first step in customizing your YouTube Channel is to set up a custom background image, like a great ski shot or a custom branded image. See Squaw Valley for example. Many ski areas use the official resort logo in order to make it easy for people to identify the channel.

The next step is to edit your channel details, including the title, description, and tags. These are all simple ways to improve your visibility on YouTube and make your channel look professional.

Next, marketers should select a featured video such as an upcoming special event, a resort highlighted video, or the video that netted the most views. Finally, connect YouTube with your other social networks, blogs, and websites. This is an excellent way to get your video content distributed to other social networks and, if you have a good call to action in your video, drive traffic to your website.

Step 2 – Engagement is Key 

YouTube homescreen is now completely custom

Thanks to the recent homepage redesign, everyone that is signed into YouTube will see their own channel and subscriptions first, making content more relevant to the user. Instead of getting the latest viral video, regardless of who produced it, now YouTubers can see the channels they have actually subscribed to.

Getting more subscribers to your video channel and making sure they interact with your video will boost your channel visibility, ultimately creating a small viral effect. The newly designed homepage is welcomed by users that have so far been diligently producing videos but only to gain a few hundred views. Continue to create videos consistently, even daily if possible, and create a call to action for your followers to get them to interact with the video. It’s also wise to be active yourself on YouTube by taking action on other videos. Every action users take on your channel will boost your video’s overall visibility.

Step 3 – Social Media Measurements or YouTube Analytics

Today’s marketers are now looking for methods to measure their social media efforts beyond the likes, followers, subscribers and views. Enter YouTube Analytics, formerly called Insight. Within YouTube’s new analytics window, users can analyze the overall performance of their video, changes to net subscribers, and what type of engagement the video received (i.e., likes, dislikes, comments, shares, favorites added and favorites removed).

 

Users can also see the geographic area the video was viewed from, the sources that drove traffic to the video, and even whether it was played via the YouTube homepage, an embedded player, or a mobile device.

The playback location helps users determine what websites and blogs are embedding the videos and connecting with them. YouTube’s Audience Retention metric helps determine how engaging the videos are by showing at  what point viewers left the video. With this, necessary edits can be made to the video content and length. Knowing what makes your videos engaging, where are people watching them, how many people take actions and what kind and who’s embedding your videos are all important metrics that will help you improve your video content, increase your engagement and contribute to your overall social media measurements.

With online video boosting brand recall by 50 percent and likability by 26 percent, ski resort marketers will find YouTube, Vimeo and other online video networks a prime location to further connect with skiers and riders.

Milena Regos is the founder of Out&About Marketing, a digital marketing and social media consultancy based in Lake Tahoe with focus on ski resort areas, travel and tourism and health and fitness. Contact her milena@outandaboutmarketing.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YouTube by the Numbers  

• 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute, resulting in nearly 8 years of content uploaded every day

• More than 3 billion videos are viewed daily

• 150 years of YouTube video are watched every day on Facebook

• Every minute more than 500 tweets contain YouTube links

• More video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than the three major U.S. networks have created in 60 years

• YouTube’s demographic is broad: 18-54 years old

• 100 million people take a social action on YouTube (i.e., likes, shares, comments) every week

 Source: YouTube.com

To view the PDF from the article click below.

NSAA Milena Regos

Categories: Blog Lake Tahoe Social Media Video | 1 Comment »

How to create a great video for your brand

Posted by Milena Regos on February 3, 2012

It’s Friday so we’ll keep this post very short.  I wanted to share this video by Equinox Yoga as an example of a video well done. Do yourself a favor and spend the next 3 minutes watching it. You will feel inspired.

When I first saw it, it had close to 500,000 views within 24 hours of making it public on YouTube. The views are now close to 2.2 mil. It’s absolutely amazing. Great job Equinox Yoga!

What makes a good video: 

1. Captivating content.
2. Movement.
3. A story that draws you in.
4. Good Audio.
5. Elements of funny, amazing, entertaining, inspiring, informational or controversial help a video go viral.
6. Time – keep it to about 2 min.
7. A good looking girl in bikini helps

 

Have you seen any great videos lately?

Categories: Blog Brands I like Creativity Marketing Social Media Video | 2 Comments »

Lake Tahoe marketing and social media super stars

Posted by Milena Regos on February 2, 2012

Tahoe Thursday Series

I like it when I see a local Lake Tahoe business doing a good job with their social media marketing efforts. In addition to our Once a Month Who’s Doing it Best in Lake Tahoe in Social Media and Digital Marketing Series, I’m going to feature a local Lake Tahoe business in our Tahoe Thursday series. If you can think of any, let me know in the comments section or send me an email milena@outandaboutmarketing.com.

Today’s spotlight goes to Tahoe StandUp Paddleboards.

I’m not going to review their website today. I like what they have done with it. I’d like to concentrate on their social networks instead. Some of them are well linked from their website. (Good start) and some I had to look for. (Constructive criticism here – I had a hard time finding their youtube channel).

Let’s look at each one:

Facebook

Active and engaged feed with good interaction with other companies.

Great custom profile photo.

Excellent use of the custom tabs. I particularly liked the Team Tahoe SUP custom tab with my friend Whitney Wall featured at the top. Great way to bring personality into your brand.

Other tabs worth mentioning are the 2012 boards, telling us what to expect, the welcome tab and the Explore Project.

Overall, a visually beatiful Facebook page. Great job! Can they get even more engagement and likes and perhaps introduce Facebook commerce?  Do they have a well put social media strategy in place? If you want to check your Facebook EdgeRank score for free and establish a benchmark for the company, Facebook Edgerank Checker is a good free tool to use for that. For more detailed Facebook Analytics and intelligence, hit me up.

Twitter

Twitter is one of my favorite networks. The Twitter account for Tahoe SUP didn’t disappoint visually. Great custom background image carrying our the brand with urls to other social networks and website assets.

A quick check on Klout shows Tahoe SUP at 21 with topics of influence of construction, plastic and surfing. What is Klout? Klout has positioned themselves as the standard of influence on the web, a very interesting and controversial topic of conversation. They give you a score of 1 to 100 and the higher your score is the most influence you have on the web. They also analyze your conversations and tweets and assign topics to you they believe you are influential in.

With a fun sport like paddle boarding I would imagine that Tahoe SUP can do a lot better on Twitter. To see the entire Twittalyzer dashboard for Tahoe SUP, head over to the this link. Sure, Tahoe SUP can do better with their twitter activity but at least they are not cross posting Facebook to Twitter as many bigger brands wrongly do. (More on this in another post).

YouTube

The Tahoe SUP YouTube account is also customized with their brand. With 8 videos and 31 subscribers, I’d venture to say they can definitely improve their video presence. Although, they are fairly active with 8,635 views to their channel.

I loved their video on paddle boarding with dogs in Lake Tahoe with the dog whisperer as featured on National Geographic. Nicely done. Who doesn’t like going out on the lake with the dog and enjoying the outdoors.

and finally the Tahoe SUP Blog

Prominently featured right on the home page, Tahoe SUP has an active blog. One thing I couldn’t figure out was how to leave a comment on a blog post but maybe I just missed it. If I didn’t, adding comments to the blog will be a good improvement.

I particularly like the integration of photos, videos and the team within the blog. It makes it easy to look around and get a feel for the sport before you jump both feet into it. And as a passionate paddle boarder, I highly recommend it.

Overall, Tahoe SUP is doing a good job with social media. I’m sure they have limited resources to spend online and if their products are flying off the shelves already, then I’m sure they are analyzing what makes the most sense for the company. I see a lot of opportunities and potential to grow their business and connect with paddle boarders around the world.

I hope spring comes soon and we can all go out and enjoy the sport. I know I can’t wait to grab my Tahoe SUP and go out.

 

 

Categories: Blog Brands I like Business Facebook Lake Tahoe Marketing Small Businesses Social Media Social Media Marketing Success Stories Twitter Video | No Comments »

7 action steps to creating your Social Media Strategy

Posted by Milena Regos on February 1, 2012

Photo credit: Flickr. Sean MacEntee

2012 is the year that you need to create a social media strategy for your business if you don’t have one yet. Just make this your goal and I promise you it will pay off.

Radian6 report recently released states: “Strategic users are almost three times more likely to execute activities for engaging prospects than informal users (53% vs. 19%)” — and they were likely to see increased revenues.”

A few critical items to include in your social media strategy are:

1. Company Goals and Objectives – Why are you on social media and how does it align with your business goals. You can’t look at social media alone. You need to consider how it complements your existing marketing efforts and how it contributes to your overall business objectives. Starting off with your goals is the best way to make sure you are actually getting involved on social media in the right places and for the right reasons. Measuring your success down the road will also depend on the type of goals you are setting up for your company.
2. Listening – what are people saying about you, your brand, your competitors and your industry. Is it positive or negative. What can you learn from this information and how can you use it to improve your business, your marketing and your social media efforts. An absolutely critical part to every social media effort, listening is what will make you successful on social media. I see way too many companies skipping over this part and not spending enough time and resources to actively listen. Yes, it takes time but thankfully there are plenty of free and paid software options to streamline this process for you.
3. Content Strategy – a very important part to your overall social strategy is the content that you are going to send out to your community. Identify who is it that you are speaking to, what interest them, what makes them share your content, how often they would like to receive it and in what form – video, podcast, text, photos. Create an editorial calendar with your topics and leave some space for breaking news and stories that will come up. Think of the Call to Action you want to include with each piece of content and identify how your content relates to your business objectives.
4. Engagement Strategy – now that you have a clear picture of the type of content you are going to create, think of how you are going to distribute it on the social web. What are your internal or external resources for engagement? How much time can you dedicate daily/weekly to engage and be present? If you don’t have sufficient internal resources what can you outsource to a qualified person or an agency. I don’t recommend outsourcing everything you do as you lose your voice and your authenticity but done properly you can outsource certain tasks.
5. Tactical Strategy – only after you have considered all of these steps, you can dig deeper into the tactical area of your social media. What platforms are best to use to reach your customers. Obviously, we have the BIG FOUR: Facebook, YouTube, LInkedIn and blogging but there are niche social networks that may be more applicable to your business. For example, Pinterest is driving more traffic than Facebook to retailers. So even if Facebook has a huge population base, a social network like Pinterest may be your winner for increasing sales. Having a centralized social media hub from where you can distribute your content will help tremendously with saving time. A good social media platform will also help with your engagement and measurements. We work with a few and can make a specific recommendation for your business if you need assistance in this area.
6. Measurements and Benchmarks – a big conversation topic these days is the return on investment from your social media marketing. Although, there are no industry established measurements yet, there are so many ways to measure your efforts that unless you link them to your objectives (see 1) you will get flooded with data. Starting with your reach (fans and followers), engagement rate, leads, sales, share of voice and customer service just to mention a few, there are indeed ways to measure your efforts. If you are not sure where to start, give us a call and don’t be too alarmed. Only 13% of marketers today are saying that they are very effective at measuring their social media marketing.

7.  Review and Adjustments - a very important part of every social media strategy is the periodic review and adjustment. Once a month, take a look at what’s really going on, compare it to your plan and make the necessary adjustments to improve your social media effort. Drop the things that are not working and do more of the stuff that’s working. Only after applying your strategy in real life you will know what’s really sticking with your audience and what makes them engage with your brand.

If you need help with your social media strategy, give us a call. We’ll be glad to help out. And if you need more ideas for your social media plan, take a look at Radian6 30 ideas for your 2012 social media plan. I’m sure you’ll find some interesting nuggets of information that you can apply to your business today. Your turn – do you currently have a social media strategy and if not are you planning on creating one soon? Let us know in the comments below.

 

Categories: Blog eMarketing Facebook LinkedIn Measurements Photosharing Social Bookmarks Social Media Social Media Marketing Twitter Video | No Comments »

Cool brand new app for the tourism industry – TourWrist

Posted by Milena Regos on November 30, 2011

This brand new shiny object got our attention. It’s called TourWrist and we see a lot of marketing and social media potential for travel and tourism brands, ski resorts, real estate, hotels, photographers and any other company in need of a 360 virtual tour to showcase their product or service.

What are some of the reviews this app is getting:

• Featured by Apple! Winner of the 2011 Communication Arts Interactive Annual!
• Experience what some are calling the #1 Free App of All Time.
• “One of the most spectacular virtual-tour user experiences I’ve seen” – Fast Company Design

What we like:

App: It comes with an app for iPhone or iPad so to fully utilize it, get the app.

Ease: Snap a panoramic or 360 degree photo with your iPhone and using the platform turn it into an amazing visual that will really make your property, resort, hotel or shop pop up on the Internet. Professional photography will look great on this tour. Imagine the possibilities for marketing your venue.

Augmented Reality: Using this app on your iPad is super cool. Check it out today for a glimpse of the future.

Example of a tour: Don’t try to click on the image. Unfortunately, TourWrist doesn’t allow to embed tours in WordPress sites. If you wan to see a tour in action, click here. It’s a cool photo from Sand Harbor that Jen Schmidt took last summer.

Marketing tools: You can share your tour on social media, embed it on your site (except for WordPress and Posterous sites) and even create a QR code for it.

Price: So far, it looks like it’s free so that’s AWESOME. Hope it stays this way.

We are planning on spending some more time with this tool and really putting it to work for marketing purposes with travel and tourism brands. If you have used it already, let us know your feedback or just check it out.

Special thanks goes to Mike Henderson who posted it on Facebook.

Categories: Blog Brands I like Business Golf industry Marketing Ski industry Social Media Social Media Marketing Technology Video Web 2.0 tools | 6 Comments »